A gruesome video corroborates that police leveled several blows at Aponte before dragging him, still cuffed, down the street and beyond the camera’s view:

The Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office is also looking into allegations that the police robbed the two men. One of them, Aponte, plead guilty to weapons possession charges after the incident, and he still remains in jail. Rivera is out of jail, and at a press conference on Monday he made a statement about the brutality charges. “I just want for this not to happen to anybody else,” Rivera said. “We were tried and we had our time in court. They shouldn’t have took it upon themselves to try to issue justice.”

This isn’t the first complaint of police brutality leveled against Paterson police. In January of this year, a woman named Linette Vazquez came forward to complain that she had been tossed to the ground and strangled while handcuffed in a Paterson holding cell two years earlier. There, too, the moment was captured on film.

Tags:

Like ThinkProgress on Facebook

By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.